@decentral1se posted this over on the CoTech forum
Hey Josef! That’s a very interesting one, but deadline next Wednesday. We’d need to present an expression of interest only.
We invite you to submit your expression of interest to apply to a thematic Culture of Solidarity call to strengthen a European public space. We are looking for projects that contribute to inclusive and democratic European media platforms, networks and infrastructure during the Corona infodemic.
The deadline for submitting the expressions of interest is Wednesday 31 March 2021 at 13:00 CET.
In Phase II, shortlisted and invited candidates may apply for a grant up to a maximum of €40.000 per project. With a project term of up to 18 months, grants can be used for financing a wide range of activities ranging from seed money for entirely new initiatives to (co-)funding for scaling up already existing ideas to a European level.
Although co-funding is not a prerequisite for funding, a balanced budget with diversified resources can significantly improve the project’s feasibility. Grants can cover production-, rental costs, online co-working and communication tools. They can also be used to cover expert fees, staff- and operational costs. However, it is highly recommended that these do not exceed 80% of the total requested budget unless justifiable.
- Budget idea: request 40k€ of a total budget of 50 k€ and assure the 20% cofunding comes from the subscriptions we’re generating
The 1st phase application form: Culture of Solidarity Fund 2021
We need to check who can receive the funds and how we can impute the costs of the budget, through which organisations.
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I have made a start at the linked document. Who can help and tinker with me on this? On Wednesday we need to submit it. It’s simply a first phase expression of interest. Should be doable.
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I’ve just written a draft, please have a look and improve or comment inside the doc.
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DONE! Submitted, fingers crossed 
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Hey, we passed the first stage and are now invited for the 2nd stage! With 60 other proposals. I’m not sure how many of us may be selected; I see in a previous round they had 29 selected out of 2500 first round proposals. Let’s hope that chances are better this round 
So now comes the real work
To Do:
- present ourselves during the “meet the other projects” on Friday 30th of April 11-15h CEST and participate in the networking with other projects
- prepare second stage submission, submit by May 18th
- decide for the legal entity that participates (1st stage I said: “The Online Meeting Co-operative - meet.coop”) We should check how we’d like this to be and request a change. Options:
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- through P6
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- through Free Knowledge Institute
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- plan incorporation of multistakeholder co-operative as defined in our roadmap
- detailed budget & activities & deliverables
- communication plan
It’d be good to prepare this with a few people, and at least decide our strategy together, so that in case we get through, we execute the plan that we want. Who’d be available to join for a dedicated “All” Hands next Thursday 29th April? (or better worded: “a special session in the space of the All Hands timeframe” ;-))
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Is everything you need in hand for Friday? Is there any help you would like?
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I wasn’t aware of Coopcloud, it looks very interesting! Reading through the docs, great work. Looking forward to seeing more of it.
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We got it 
I hope you all did too! More news soon…
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Wonderful news! Well done! Keep us posted.
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hey, congrats @decentral1se @3wc and team! Here we’re still waiting to get the selection results 
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ECF has put us on the waiting list. Mike and I had a rather positive conversation with their coordinator this morning. Here’s the summary:
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ECF team found our meet.coop proposal very good, and are not rejecting it, but continue to expand their funding budget to possibly fund us still this year (but with 13 others on the reserve list as well). In any case that’s what ECF does: work with other funders to fund cultural projects in Europe. We had the disadvantage to present ourselves through a Dutch entity (FKI), now that they had already preselected various proposals from NL. They also considered somewhat negative the fact that we are not specifically focused on Europe. That said, he mentioned it was a pleasure to read our proposal, very well written; they consider the platform very interesting, the cooperative and commons aspects of it, and the various key values we work. Also our awareness of our whitemale geek background and awareness with other issues is seen as very positive.
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They are looking into the possibility to become members and use our services. Maybe from Menno’s department or ECF-wide. He mentioned the team’s aim of practice what you preach, but also an operational hesitation to change. Now they have a multiuser account at Zoom, they might go for multiuser at meet.coop.
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possibility to support ECF funded projects (and on the reserve list) with meet.coop service.
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we should keep them in the loop about the commons.hour. They can possibly promote the events + encourage grantees to join and participate actively to (selected) events
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they plan to send us an update before August - then during August he’ll be on holidays.
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He also mentioned wrt 1) the possibility that the funders they talk with, instead of funding through ECF might be interested to fund us directly. He’ll be pitching us so to speak. I mentioned our availability for specific meetings to join or provide specific info whenever he considered that useful
re 2) he may ask us for technical help or specific support to get them started
though we had hoped to make it, it is all in all not bad, let’s hope they can confirm some of these proposals.
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Great! I had similar experience and impression. Also keep pushing with cultural institutions and funders to practice what they preach *(when talking commons).
Best Z. Blace *(t!S / QueeringWikimedia project)
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